A longtime East Coast resident, Bushman and her husband, Richard, have lauded the "new commitment of the church to urban areas" after living through the flight to the suburbs and watching as the church "sold all its urban city properties. But almost immediately afterward, it began to grow in the city."

Currently, some 132 wards and branches — three of them singles wards — are a part of the 14 stakes or districts, with more than 42,000 members who will use the new temple.

Belnap remembers the rebirth of a congregation in lower Manhattan four years ago, after a 15-year hiatus of activity around Wall Street and the city's financial center. Shortly after 9/11, people again fled the city in droves, but the growth has continued nearly unfettered since.

"If anything, it was just a temporary breather, and things have sailed right on. We've actually gone over the growth numbers to statistically demonstrate what's happened to the church here since, and 9/11 is an indistinguishable event."

For several years, the midtown location that now houses the temple across from Lincoln Center was the only LDS building in Manhattan. At one point last year, it housed eight wards in space built for four.

But a map of the church's presence here today shows buildings in every major sector of the city, many of them marked in red as being "overutilized" and others marked in green as being "under construction." In Manhattan alone, a building housing three church units was dedicated in January near Union Square, the Canal Street branch in Chinatown will move to a new rental building in two weeks, and construction on a new multistory chapel in Harlem is set to begin this month.

In addition, the demolition is being completed on a property the church purchased on East 87th Street between Second and Third Avenues, set to house a multistory meetinghouse that looks from preliminary architectural renderings to be a mixture of historic cathedral and chapel combined.

Belnap credited former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's cleanup campaign aimed at city streets and parks as one reason for the increased interest in urban living. As a city dweller, Bushman said the church "needs a serious downtown presence nearly everywhere." She praised the "great vision shown by our area presidency recently in seeing that we needed this kind of space."

Outlying areas of the city are also experiencing a growth spurt. Ground was broken just last weekend for a new building in New Rochelle, which lies just northeast of Manhattan.

Mark Bench, president of the church's Westchester stake that includes the Bronx, said as new converts continue to come into the church economic and cultural extremes in the area present some challenges. His stakes includes the wealth and prestige of Scarsdale, N.Y., contrasted with one ZIP code area within the Bronx that registers the lowest per-capita income in the country.